Planets

Planets

Exhibition Text

The Sun, an unremarkable star, holds in orbit a system of planets. If most Sun-like stars have planets, then there should be billions of planets in our Milky Way Galaxy. Numerous other planetary systems have already been detected, many with configurations quite different than that of our solar system.

Visible sunlight heats a planet’s surface, which re-radiates the energy as infrared light. Certain atmospheric gases absorb and trap much of this infrared energy, raising the temperature at the surface.